Defying Expectations...In a Good Way · 9:04pm Jun 23rd, 2019
We're officially at the halfway point of Season 9, and I'm pleasantly surprised with the quality of episodes so far. I admit, after the lackluster S8, I was prepared not to like this season. Perhaps my lowered expectations helped me enjoy the season more. The weakest episode was "Uprooted," but it wasn't anywhere near as bad as "Non-Compete Clause." "Twilight's Eight" and "Frenemies" were both excellent, and the rest of the episodes have been consistently good. I'm pleased that this series is going out on a high note.
To that end, I've written a meta fic about the series ending, but I'm going to hold off on uploading it until we get closer to the finale. No reason to get maudlin just yet.
The next order of business is to make myself rewrite my rough draft of the "Earth Ponies Are OP" sequel. Even if I decide to keep all of the exposition, I still need to work on making it flow better.
I will have to agree with you! Going to the Seed surprised me by having Applejack build a comprise with Apple Bloom instead of just forcing her to not believe the story. Frenemies was the best episode for me hands down, loved the song and very first villian centred episode.
The only things I haven't liked so far were "The Last Crusade" and the new animation for Celestia and Luna's facial expressions. It just looks really off. And "The Last Crusade" could have been written better to set up a scene where everypony was not suddenly okay with child abandonment. But yeah, I've liked the season so far.
5078905
I was concerned that "Going to Seed" would have some of the same problems as the Troubleshoes episode, but it was surprisingly good. Not perfect, but the sisterly conflict and lesson were handled better than I expected.
5078934
Yeah, the ending to "The Last Crusade" left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, although at least Scoots' canon family is better than some fanfics I've read.